“What did I tell you about your flame? You’ll be hungry tonight with an empty firebladder, and all the hungrier when you get none of whatever your sisters bring back.”
“You thsaid they’d be wulnerable when on the ground asleep,” the drake said, glaring at the wolves.
“I told you they might have dogs,” AuRon said. “Men, well, they might as well be those bundles for all they use their noses and ears. That’s why they travel with dogs. Dogs that come out of the soundest sleep at the whiff of a dragon.”
“Wolves aren’t dogs,” Aumoahk complained. “No fairz using wolves.”
“No, wolves are smarter, as they don’t have men to do all their thinking for them. If you can creep up on a wolf, no dog will ever give you trouble.”
A cry carried across the valley. Strange to hear a wolf-howl in the bright morning sunshine. Ausurath took the cry as his cue to jump on one of the scarecrows. He kicked a bottomless bucket serving for a head down the hillside.
AuRon cocked an ear, reminding himself to send Ausurath off to retrieve the bucket.
“News, news, hear me, O Good Woooooooooolves!” he heard.
“The blighters are probably fighting again,” AuRon said. “Every cairn-building starts a feud.”
He’d invited a few families of blighters from the rugged Northwest Coast of the Inland Ocean to settle on the isle, where they could mine and herd in safety, trading the rather poor ores to be found on the island for the protection of the dragons. While not as intelligent as elves or as industrious as dwarves, they were easier to deal with than other hominid races.
He glanced up the hillside, where Natasatch was watching Istach and Varatheela stalk some goats. Varatheela’s tail quivered just like his sister Wistala’s on the hunt. Istach tended to be quiet and reserved, perhaps because of the odd dark stripes on her green scale. The males were forever quoting some bit of hatchling rhyme they overheard their mother say when the parents thought their hatchlings asleep.
She born with stripes looks to a bitter fate,
As many suitors as stripes, but never to mate.
Istach gave as good as she got. She liked to weave the scales on her brothers’ tails as they slept, so when they twitched to wakefulness each yelped as the scales pinched or tore free.
He sighed. Of the six dragons of his family, he was the only survivor. Unless his brother, maimed in the hatching duel, still lived. Not that he deserved his heartsbeat. He’d betrayed the rest of them to the dwarves.
Oh, Tala. It’s a hard world—for both dragons and goats.
Natasatch raised her head as well. She’d picked up enough wolf-speech to understand an alarm.
“O good woooooooolves! Strangers on the island, trail and spoor on morning-side downwind, to the burned clear and fjord-caves. Pass this news to Firelong, O Good Wooooooooooolves!”
Birchfang hopped up on a smooth-topped rock that reminded AuRon of a sea turtle he’d once met and began to pass the news.
“Don’t bother with that,” AuRon said. “I heard. Thank your pack, friend. I’ll fly north to Grass Point and bring back a moose for you first chance I get.”
Birchfang’s mate looked at her husband, pride shining in her eyes. Though they were both young, they’d already founded their own pack. The freshly named Mist Hunters had a range nearly as great as the whole woodlands of their birth. Here there were no men to catch wolves in cruel traps and nail their pelts to barn doors and fenceposts.
ONE
Adapt
GRANT A FAVOR TO ONE GENERATION OF HOMINIDS, AND YOU’LL FIND
THEIR SONS TWICE AS DEMANDING—AND THRICE AS FORGETFUL.
—AuRel the Bronze
Chapter 1
AuRon son of AuRel, the scaleless dragon who lived upon the Isle of Ice, watched his sons blink in the brassy sun of the dazzling northern spring.
In the winter, AuRon had learned, the island saw constant snow, coming in waves from low iron clouds. Summers were alternately foggy and rainy, save for a brief, enchanted dry spell after midsummer. But the turning seasons, spring and fall, slow getting started but always lingering thanks to the warm ocean currents, made up for the rest.
As though in apology, spring had brought wildflowers to the thin patches of soil clinging between granite spurs where the wind died. Their yellow and blue and white heads looked up, as bright as sun, sea, and sky. Incredibly, insects already danced and buzzed between the blooms, keeping low, out of the wind, where the sky heated black earth and turned melt into mire.